What is so revolutionary about the interface? Does it show fingerprints? Yes. Does it crack/break? Yes. Does it provide any tactile feedback? No. Once it can fix those issues, it will be revolutionary.

I think being able to flick you finger to effortlessly scroll pages is pretty revolutionary. The ability to pinch your fingers to zoom is revolutionary. I didn't say it was perfect, but it WILL change the way we interact with touch screens.

Well, I can say the same about Windows and the pre-XP days. Honestly, I get a true blue-screen crash on my XP machines very rarely (maybe every 3 months?). Same goes for my Vista machine. It used to be a daily occurrence with Windows 95.

So, while OSX has improved in stability, so has XP. Hence, IMHO, OSX is no more stable than XP.

Well, I can say the same about Windows and the pre-XP days. Honestly, I get a true blue-screen crash on my XP machines very rarely (maybe every 3 months?). Same goes for my Vista machine. It used to be a daily occurrence with Windows 95.

So, while OSX has improved in stability, so has XP. Hence, IMHO, OSX is no more stable than XP.

FWIW, I have never gotten a blue screen crash on my XP SP2 notebook from work in the 3 years I have used it. And I use it at least 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.

In response to the OP, without evangelizing, three things keep me from getting an iPhone:

No push e-mail (this is not an issue if you are on BIS and don't get it anyways)

No wireless sync with Outlook/Exchange calendar (this may not be an issue if you are not out of the office a lot, I am). I can't tell you how much joy I got when I was finally able to toss my BB cradle.

No keyboard. Sorry, I just cannot type on a touch screen. I have tried it and just can't.

Sure, the other features (browser, music, etc.) are infinitely superior in the iPhone. But I just cannot sacrifice the core function of the BB (i.e. an e-mail/calendar appliance) for the sake of those extras.

Well, I can say the same about Windows and the pre-XP days. Honestly, I get a true blue-screen crash on my XP machines very rarely (maybe every 3 months?). Same goes for my Vista machine. It used to be a daily occurrence with Windows 95.

So, while OSX has improved in stability, so has XP. Hence, IMHO, OSX is no more stable than XP.

And the overwhelming majority of Windows crashes are caused by device drivers. If Apple accepted as many aftermarket hardware as Windows, it would crash as often. I used to work on IBM AS/400. They never crashed. Then again, all the hardware was IBM designed, built and tested.

It honestly is a personal preference and, as Sith said, I get tired of the negative threads. People have different needs and thus use different products. Thank God we have choice. If it was up to some people, there would be only one cell phone or one computer. How boring! Give us variety and the ability to try them out for ourselves. Then, and only then, can we make an intelligent, personal choice. Right now, for me, that choice is the Blackberry Pearl, the perfect blend of size and specs. That and my MacBook are all I need to fulfill my technological psychosis!

I guess the more that I think about it, the typing is very important to me and I did notice that it was difficult for me on the iphone. So, it's probably better for me to stay with a BB. I'd really like to just see more of a GUI web browser so that internet usage, which I do a lot, is not so limited and difficult.

I guess the more that I think about it, the typing is very important to me and I did notice that it was difficult for me on the iphone. So, it's probably better for me to stay with a BB. I'd really like to just see more of a GUI web browser so that internet usage, which I do a lot, is not so limited and difficult.

The keyboard was my main issue as well. If you go back on my reasons for dismissing the iPhone, I said over and over again that tactile keyboards are the way to go.

Let me give you some raw data so you know how much I use my phone to type a message. Since February 2nd, I have typed 108 emails, and 340 SMS messages on the iPhone. To be perfectly honest with you, I got used to non tactile keyboard in all of 1 day.

Here's how it works. Basically, I type with one hand, my right hand, rather than two hands as I did with my BB. They claim after a while you get great at the 2 handed typing. I got so used to one hand, I haven't bothered to try. Now as you type, if it's a common word it may guess it for you, and you can hit space bar to accept it. In that instance, many times I get to half the word, see the suggested word, accept it, and continue typing. When that happens, you are very fast.

It also learns common words you use. Some words that should be all uppercase for example, it just replaces them for me the way the BlackBerry does that auto replace; except I never outright say what the replace should be. It just sort of learned it on it's own.

Sometimes you type a word somewhat wrong. For example, I mean to type "THING" but maybe I missed the T right off, and typed R so I am typing "RHING". In cases such as that, the phone somehow understands that the word should be THING anyway, and shows a special box which basically is a visual way of saying that the iPhone believes the word should be "THING" and if you do nothing, it will trade RHING for THING. You don't have to accept it, you have to reject it if you don't want that to happen. As a result, you can actually type most words, even with slight mistakes, and they will auto fix themselves.

This might all sound time consuming or complex, but it isn't. It all happens in such a way where you just keep on typing, and let this happen by doing nothing.

Another example, the first few times I typed in "pc" it wanted to trade "pc" for "of" but it has since learned "pc" should be "PC". Now if I did nothing, the word "pc" would have been traded for "of" but since I declined it, it learned "pc" is part of my vocabulary and has stopped trying to trade that word for "of".

So in some cases, you prevent it from trading a word, and thus teach it. But in most cases, the trade is correct, and you type continuously and correctly even when small errors are made. This is why you hear people saying you have to trust it. Those people re saying enough. At least that's how i felt. The correct thing to say is this. You don't have to trust it, because it's telling you what the swap word is. You have to be lazy. If you typo, just keep typing. You'll see that by the end of the word as a whole or before that time, a swap word will show up, and if you keep typing, it will auto accept itself and you do nothing. As a result, I actually type faster on the iPhone than on the BlackBerry. And the folks at work were the first to challenge me on this very point, and all of them found out that I was telling the truth on that point. I can bang out an email faster on one hand on the iPhone than I could with 2 thumbs on the BB. Two iPhone owners made this claim to me before I switched, and I'll be perfectly honest with you. I didn't believe it. I said, I type pretty darn fast on my BB. I seriously doubt you can type faster. I actually said that, and I now stand corrected.

The keyboard is no problem. You think you'll hate it, but in a couple days, you start to like it. The reason is simple. When you go to type in a phone number, the entire screen pad becomes the phone keys. Unlike the BB, where you have to just use a small sub-section of the tiny keyboard. Ever use the calculator on the BB? Not fun at all. But on the iPhone, it's as easy as a real calculator because the screen becomes ONLY a calculator.

The calendar on the iPhone is also well made. Press the date you want. Hit the + key to add an entry. Time wheels shows up making it very easy to set the time and date of an appointment. You can add calendar entries, notes, etc in record time, but the screen changes and becomes specific for the task at hand, rather than remaining a general purpose keypad. And this is the strength of what has been done.

I am not saying I am right. Each person will actually decide if this works better for them or not. I thought it wouldn't work for me, but it truly turned out to work much better overall than I thought it would.

In fact, I find myself wishing my computer worked this way now. It's a faster, easier way to work.

I believe you will see a lot of momentum for this product. Because one of two things are happening. We're all either biased and unwilling to allow ourselves to like it for whatever reason, or we truly don't like it. I believe there is a lot of bias out there, and over time they will own up to what is true. And for those that did give it an honest shot, and don't like it, will stay where they are. But I suspect that many are not giving it enough of a shot to really know if the keyboard is really as awful as they suppose it is.

The real problem is the software situation. It lacks software. But I suppose the momentum is so great that you will soon see a flood of software for this. With the impressive sales numbers, I think every developer is going to race to support this phone. And in doing so, pretty soon you're going to see a lot of free press and momentum where the iPhone is concerned. And at times, you will ask yourself if you made the right choice, because for at least a while, all the "cool" things are going to seem like they are happening on the other side of the fence.

This happened when Apple introduced Final Cut and I as an Avid editor watched time and time again, new, exciting improvements on that product while mine appeared to stand still. It was the momentum. Developers love that, and I submit to you that in less than a months time, you will see tremendous momentum. And of course, the consumer is the one who benefits from it.

Keep something else in mind. You have 8 or 16 GBs of memory with this iPhone. No one on the iPhone is concerned with counting free memory space.

Another thing that I just thought of that I love about the iPhone is that Apple sends out updates via iTunes. While I'm sure that in the future there will be more versions of the iPhone, for now everytime they update it you can just download the update via iTunes, as opposed to when a BlackBerry gets an update it usually happens on the next version.

Yeah, what I love about the iPhone is that there's no user replaceable battery, so you get what they give you. Then it costs how much to have Apple replace for you, while for those 2-3 days you have no device.

Apple makes anything they want and Apple-heads will drool over it, no matter how good or bad.

Since the last update of Mac OS X to 10.3.2, I now "enjoy" application crashes like it's Mac OS 9 again. On both a G5 and a PowerBook G4.

Is it just me or does someone else have the same problem?

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despite others on line telling my I was wrong, I also had nothing but problems with 10.3.2 despite a number of reinstalls, checking for faulty memory, repair permissions and all that stuff, nothing helped. I finally reinstalled to 3.1.1 and have had no more kernel panics- only a few mouse related freezes on wakeup.

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I experience the mouse freezes a lot (Logitech wireless mouse) unless I wake the computer *with* the mouse.

I also have consistent kernel panics each time I plug my camera in the USB port now. That one is the most frustrating problem, as you can imagine!

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I am running Panther in my iBook. I had several kernel panics, and everyday I have crashes of Safari, IE, etc. In my opinion this is as bad as OS9, not the rock solid OS Apple wnated to sell.

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I have had nothing but bad luck with my PB G4 1.25 running 10.3.2. Crashes often on wake from sleep, Tried all the voodoo--there is a huge mass of lore about why these machines crash on wake. Some say it's 10.3.2, others say it's hardware. others find gremlins in other programs. I tried reinstall, hardware reset, I even returned the machine to Apple, and it was returned with "could not reproduce." What a deep disappointment to pay such big $ for such a buggy machine!

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My 400 MHz Power Mac G4 running 10.3.2 use to crash with the "press restart button" screen whenever I plugged in my Cannon A60 into my Newpoint USB Hub, when running iPhoto or Image Capture. I operated normally if I either removed the Logitech wireless mouse driver, or if I connected the camera directly to the USB port on the computer. OS X has USB issues.

I also occasionally get mouse freezes waking from sleep. This can be resolved by unplugging, then reconnecting the USB cable leading into my hub. This seems to reset the USB driver. (My hub connects to my printer, mouse, scanner, & camera cable.) I had the mouse freezes problem with 10.2 also. ... Again, OS X needs more work on it's USB driver.

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There are several lengthy threads about this issue at MacNN, ArsTechnica, and Apple's Discussion forums. The 10.3.2 update has caused a lot of trouble for many Mac users. There seems to be two or three causes for the crashing. One is a bug in the CrashReporter system. The other is caused by Airport 3.3

I hope this doesn't devolve into yet another "Apple sucks ... no BB sucks" flamefest. The OP just wanted to know what people thought was compelling, or not so compelling, about iPhones. So far the responses have been true to that request.

Alex, I'm not an iphone hater, I do acknowledge it has some strengths that BlackBerry doesn't. But several points in your note are not valid and deserve to be pointed out, I'll do so inline in red.

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Originally Posted by Alex Alexzander

I have been posting on these forums for a god while. Not as long as some of you, but a good while. I bought an 8800 and later an 8310. I have said a few things about the iPhone after having used a friends iPhone. Using it for an hour or a few minutes doesn't really count. I say that because, about a week ago, I walked into the Apple store and bought one.

I had Exchange server hosted by Mail2Web for $15 a month, with the BlackBerry Enterprise Services add on for another $15 a month. And BES is truly great. Instant email is the hallmark of the BlackBerry. It's why I bought it in the first place, and it didn't disappoint me one bit.

I did pay a premium as you can see, since my Exchange services were not provided by the company I work for. It was simply me paying all the bills to get the best possible experience. And I truly got what I paid for. I had left the Palm Treo for the BlackBerry. The Treo was driving me crazy, and it made m so angry so many times, the veins in my forehead and neck would stick out and people would quickly say, calm down, it's not worth it. Once I was trying to send an email reply to a client and it took 20 minutes of trying just to get the email to send. That was the last straw, and I went BlackBerry and loved it.

When the iPhone released, I thought about all the BlackBerry has to offer. Software, reliability, etc. It's all good. And I won't take anything away from those qualities because they are unmatched in my opinion.

But, I obviously did buy an iPhone. So what do I think? It's been more than a week, and I have canceled my BlackBerry. So am I saying the email is better on iPhone? Well, in some ways it is, and in some ways it is not. Which is just my opinion. Let me explain...

When you get an email on the iPhone, you pretty much see it the same way you do on your PC or Mac. You don't need an add on. The two add ons that are available for the BB do not match the quality of the email presentation on the iPhone. It is simply better visually. Definitely true at this point, but RIM is very close to their own full html release of the BB OS and BIS server. The reason the add ons don't work as well, is because the current BIS server has already stripped much of the html content from the message before it arrives - that will soon be remedied.

One day on the way home, I was on BART. BART is a train that we have in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is mostly above ground around San Francisco, and all under ground within San Francisco. I was writing an email above ground, but when it came time to send it, I happened to be underground with no signal. When I reached my destination, I found that AT&T was having a problem with their network. I found this because I have two accounts on the iPhone, and neither worked, but they did work on my Mac. So nothing wrong with the accounts. The problem was with AT&T accessing data services. The minutes I was close enough to my apartment, the iPhone sensed my WiFi, attached, and sent the emails, bypassing AT&Ts problems.

I have WiFi at work, at home, and in most places I travel to. It acts as a backup to the data network, and it's great to have it. WiFi does a few things for you. Your whole story above about BART, underground, and wifi would be exactly the same, if you had an 8320 with WiFi (currently available) instead of the 8310 you had - unfair to call that an iPhone advantage.

1. it can act like a GPS system, and that works in doors. When I am in downtown San Francisco, GPS doesn't work. The reason for this is that the buildings are so tall, I have no line of site to the satellites. Sounds nuts, but it is completely true. And I use GPS mostly on foot as I have sold my car years ago and take the train or walk for the last 3 years. In the city, GPS doesn't work. The iPhone triangulates Cell Towers and Beacons from WiFi hot spots to pin point your location. In a large city like San Francisco, it's impressive how accurate this is. I used it indoors with the Google map with the hybrid overlay, and it knows which house I am in!! That's impressive. And because it's Wifi / Cell Tower, it worked in about 3 seconds flat. You can ask for directions, but they are more like directions you'd get from Map Quest via Yahoo than GPS turn by turn directions. On foot, that's not a problem. But your millage may of course differ from mine. I am fine with it. The BlackBerry (8320 if you want WiFi hotspot beacons included) with Google Maps will do exactly the same thing, using exactly the same technology - and the same app! Again, unfair to call this an iPhone advantage. In fact, its an iPhone DISadvantage, since your 8310 can use either Google Maps without GPS or the superior GPS-based TeleNav, your choice.

I never thought I'd use a web browser on a cell phone, but I submit that once you use the iPhone's you will start to find all kinds of reasons why thins is a good thing. I love it now.

AudioBooks that actually work is nice. I listen to books with AudibleAir on my BlackBerry, and it works great. Once again, not an iPhone advantage. Having your music, and a few TV shows I have not yet watched is a nice plus too.

But mostly you'd want to know about software. That was my concern at least. I love ToDoMatrix on the BB. Best app ever. Now I use iCal on the Mac, and Calendar on the iPhone. It doesn't compare to ToDoMatrix, but it does give me a simple list of things I need to take care of for the day. Sounds like BlackBerry is ahead here. I've used it for short time, and truthfully, I have got so used to it that I don't really think about it anyway. I have become great at simply adding items that need to be done to the calendar, and thus I still have my client in mind.

I used to use DataVault as well. Nothing on the iphone like that. Again, score 1 for BlackBerry. I did buy FileMaker's Bento, which I used to create custom databases with. It's very good, and very simple. I hope they develop a way to allow us to create custom databases for the iPhone, because Bento is truly awesome. It is simple, powerful, and best of all, $49.

Like most things, you will feel at home when all your assets are there. Once you have your email with you, and you music, audible content, etc, you will start to see the strengths of the iPhone. Home is where your data resides. There are plenty of things to like about the iPhone and the BlackBerry.

Now I said I'd never switch. You can find some pretty damming posts by mere about the iPhone on this forum. I am eating crow right now. But I have to be honest here. I do like it, and I have indeed switched after giving the iPhone an honest chance.

Just as I did, I get an email from DataVi showing me screen shots of the coming Documents2Go. I was waiting for that for so long, and I guess my wait starts all over again as I have switched and it's not available for the iPhone. I do think that once the SDK is released for the iPhone, that you will see a lot of 3rd party software for it. The iPhone already has 28% of the shipping smart phone volume now. They have a lot of momentum. And that's attractive to developers. So I think we're going to see a lot of support for this. Enough to make a few of you re-consider your positions on the BlackBerry vs. iPhone debates. The foundation of the iPhone is pretty impressive.

The thing you give up, is PUSH email. And that has taken the most time for me to get used to. I am used to it now, and it's not a bother, but for a few days, it truly was. Now I honestly am past it. Many of you use nothing but BIS anyway, and so you're pretty much in the same arena. Not in the same arena at all. I use BIS only, since my company doesn't provide BES. I had my Exchange admin set up an auto-forward to my att.blackberry.net address, and its as fast as any BES push - if I'm working at my computer with Outlook up (set to 2 minute mail checks) the mail ALWAYS shows up on the BB first. Because it pushes to the BB's resident address.

I won't tell you the iPhone is better. That's something for you and everyone else decide on a personal level. I will say this though I was pretty adamant about the BlackBerry, and I switched.

So don't throw rocks at me. I'm just being honest. I actually feel bad for the wonderful developers. Especially Ascendo who added a feature for me in DataVault at my request. And here I am leaving the platform after they have been so nice. It feels like I have been diss loyal to their good nature. And this community is by far more professional than any iPhone forum I have seen so far. Business people here, which is more to my taste, where as the iPhone crowd tends to be kids and consumers. So those aspects count for something as well.

Anyway, thanks for being a great community, and I hope the BlackBerry continues to be a success. But for now, I have to admit, I like this iPhone.

Alex Alexzander

Additionally, I've sat beside colleagues more than once, using my 8310 while they try unsuccessfully to make calls on their iPhone, because the phone and reception on my BlackBerry (both using AT&T) is so much better than the iPhone's if you're not in a very good signal area.

No doubt whatsoever that the iPhone's multimedia capability & visuals, and therefore web browsing presentation - far eclipses that of BlackBerry right now. But the first thing I want my BlackBerry to be is a PHONE, and its a much better PHONE than iPhone. The second thing I want it to be is a reliable EMAIL machine, and its much better there too - particularly when the next release brings the full html email to the table.

If Apple wasn't so bent on locking the iPhone down so that you couldn't run third party apps w/o hacking it and tying users down with just ATT as a provider, I would consider buying one. I know that there are ways of unlocking and jailbreaking the phone and half the fun of doing so is sticking it to Apple, but if they really wanted to sell a bunch of those things to people other than apple fanboys and those who are obsessed with cool, they should have opened it up.The only reason Apple is putting out an SDK is because of the negative reaction. ATT can't even move the things now. Don't get me wrong, the iPhone is a great device and Apple is the best company in the world at pushing the wow factor, but if they would have spent another six months on the device adding things that people really wanted and not just stuff Steve Jobs thinks people wanted, and not been so paranoid about 3rd party apps out the gate, they'd really have something. It's a nice phone but still a 1.0 device and we all know about 1.0 devices don't we?